The Democrats’ new “Inflation Reduction Act” includes a provision that includes $80 billion of new funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which is supposed to help the government agency hire 87,000 new employees.
U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl (R-Mobile) recently told FOX 10 News in Mobile that people should be concerned about the attempt to bolster the IRS with this new funding.
“Well, I think the first thing in that bill that scares me to death is 87,000 new IRS agents,” Carl said. “I mean, to turn 87,000 more loose on our business community, as individuals, it should scare everybody to death.”
RELATED: U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl seeks to halt ‘expansion of the IRS’s army of armed agents’
The congressman said this effort was not just about stopping people from cheating on their taxes.
“I don’t believe for a minute that these IRS agents are just going tax fraud, big businesses and deep pockets,” he argued. “Eighty-seven thousand — that is a lot of open cases that they can open up and go after, and I just don’t believe it’s just tax loopholes as they’re referring to it.”
Carl said the consumer would have to bear most of the burden of having to pay the extra taxes included in this bill.
“That’s going to get passed on, one way or the other it’s going to get passed on,” he lamented. “And we want companies to make profits. We want to help people, we want to help the business environment out there. That’s what pays the bills. That’s what keeps us all employees.”
“So, again, we’ve got to be careful how much we let the government do,” Carl added, “and I think this going after businesses with 87,000 agents is, that’s almost like a communist country. You’re going to go out and actually squeeze people for money.”
Carl admitted that it was not certain yet that the bill being pushed by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) would be passed.
“I don’t think it’s over,” he advised. “Obviously, they’ve got to bring the Senate back. They’ve got to get 100 healthy folks there to vote. There’s several out with COVID. It’s not the COVID we’re used to, but it’s more like the flu or something, and it’s pretty rampant in the Senate right now. I think [Joe Machin] is going to have a hard time getting it passed.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
